This month, we’re pleased to release Young Blood by Sifiso Mzobe! When it was released in South Africa, the novel was praised throughout the continent, earning Sifiso the South African Literary Award, the Sunday Times Literary Award, the Herman Charles Bosman Prize, and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Here in the U.S., the praise continued as it was named one of the Most Anticipated Crime Novels of 2021 by CrimeReads, Tsitsi Dangarembga called it one of her 10 Favorite Books in an article in Vulture, and Paul Harding, author of the Pulizter Prize winning novel Tinkers, called it “a compassionate, unsentimental, and artful portrait of a young man on the threshold of trying to preserve his life and his humanity by the very means that will almost inevitably destroy both.” We’re so happy to bring this book to U.S. readers.
Young Blood centers on Sipho, a seventeen-year-old from Umlazi, a township on the outskirts of Durban, South Africa. He drops out of high school and joins a carjacking syndicate to make a name for himself and escape his family’s low-income life. Along with hijacking partners Musa and Vusi, Sipho learns the tricks of the dangerous trade and pushes deeper into the underbelly of Umlazi under the guidance of gang leader Sibani, while partying heavily and chasing women nightly despite loving his longtime girlfriend Nana.
Candid and unapologetic, Young Blood is the story of the intricate balance of circumstance and choice, swift gain and incredible loss, as Sipho finds out how far he can push his luck before the damage is irrevocable—and the consequences deadly.
You can read an excerpt from this powerful novel at CrimeReads, and you can catch Sifiso in person on April 21 as part of Stony Brook University’s Writers Speak Wednesday Series.
